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As a youngster, I consumed books until my vision grew hazy. Once my exams came around, I demonstrated the endurance of a monk, revising for hours without pause. But in lately, I’ve observed that ability for intense focus fade into infinite browsing on my device. My focus now contracts like a snail at the touch of a finger. Engaging with books for enjoyment feels less like nourishment and more like endurance training. And for someone who writes for a living, this is a occupational risk as well as something that left me disheartened. I aimed to regain that cognitive flexibility, to halt the brain rot.

Therefore, about a year ago, I made a small promise: every time I encountered a term I didn’t know – whether in a novel, an piece, or an overheard conversation – I would look it up and write it down. Not a thing elaborate, no leather-bound journal or stylish pen. Just a ongoing record kept, amusingly, on my smartphone. Each seven days, I’d devote a few minutes reading the collection back in an effort to imprint the vocabulary into my recall.

The record now spans almost 20 pages, and this tiny ritual has been quietly transformative. The payoff is less about peacocking with uncommon adjectives – which, let’s face it, can make you sound unbearable – and more about the cognitive exercise of the practice. Each time I search for and record a word, I feel a faint stretch, as though some neglected part of my brain is flexing again. Even if I never deploy “phantom” in conversation, the very act of spotting, documenting and reviewing it interrupts the slide into inactive, semi-skimmed focus.

There is also a diary-keeping aspect to it – it functions as something of a journal, a record of where I’ve been engaging, what I’ve been pondering and who I’ve been hearing.

Not that it’s an easy habit to maintain. It is often very inconvenient. If I’m reading on the subway, I have to stop in the middle, take out my device and type “millennialism” into my Google doc while trying not to bump the stranger pressed against me. It can reduce my pace to a frustrating speed. (The Kindle, with its integrated dictionary, is much easier). And then there’s the reviewing (which I frequently neglect to do), dutifully scrolling through my growing vocabulary collection like I’m preparing for a word test.

Realistically, I incorporate perhaps 5% of these words into my everyday conversation. “unreformable” was adopted. “Lugubrious” as well. But most of them remain like exhibits – admired and catalogued but seldom handled.

Still, it’s rendered my thinking much keener. I notice I'm reaching less often for the same tired selection of adjectives, and more often for something exact and muscular. Rarely are more gratifying than discovering the exact word you were searching for – like finding the lost puzzle piece that snaps the image into place.

At a time when our gadgets drain our focus with merciless effectiveness, it feels subversive to use mine as a tool for slow thought. And it has given me back something I worried I’d lost – the pleasure of engaging a mind that, after a long time of slack browsing, is at last waking up again.